The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

With the strong descriptions of winter, I made a blanket fort to read “The True Deceiver” by Tove Jansson.

Favorite quotes:

It was simply that she was only fully alive when she devoted herself to her singular ability to draw, and when she drew she was naturally always alone.

Giving another human being your undivided attention is a pretty rare thing. No, I don’t think it happens very often… Figuring out what someone wants and longs for, without being told – that probably requires a great deal of insight and thought. And of course sometimes we hardly know ourselves. Maybe we think it’s solitude we need, or maybe just the opposite, being with other people… We don’t know, not always…

People want things. It comes to them naturally. Of course they get more skillful with age, and they’re no longer so disarmingly obvious, but the goal doesn’t change. Your children simply haven’t had time to learn how it’s done. That’s what we call innocence.

Tell them it’s a secret. Tell them they don’t need to know.

Going along with something doesn’t mean you give in to it.

You shouldn’t take life so seriously. Things have a way of working out if you just wait.

She had baked, and the bread she brought was still warm, wrapped in a towel.

I remember it, I remember it quite clearly. But why? Did I trust everyone? Or was it only that I forgave them?

That snow fell a long time ago, did it not?

The light is best in the morning, or in the evening when the colours deepen, and one has to work fast before the shadows fade and vanish.